Poker is a card game in which players bet on the strength of their cards and the chances that they will have a winning hand. The objective is to extract maximum value from your winning hands and minimise losses when you have a losing hand. This is called MinMax and it is the way that truly elite players play poker.
The betting in a poker hand starts when a player places a bet of one or more chips into the pot. The players to their left may choose to call that amount of chips, raise it by placing more in the pot or simply fold their cards and drop out of the hand. If a player says “raise” and there are multiple players who raise, the new bets are put into a side pot separate from the main pot. The winner of the main pot is the person who has the best poker hand at showdown and has not folded.
One of the most important things to learn about poker is how to read other players’ tells – the unconscious habits they display that reveal information about their cards. This includes their eye contact, facial expressions and body language as well as any gestures they make. Professional poker players are experts at extracting signal from this noise and using it both to exploit their opponents and protect themselves.
